Sergio Pérez’s struggles in qualifying in Singapore led to a hard-fought Sunday evening in the race at Marina Bay circuit.
Despite having a good start that saw him jump three places on the grid to sit P10 in at the end of the first lap, the Red Bull driver spent the 62 laps in the heat unable to overtake Nico Hülkenberg’s Haas, being undercut by Sainz’s Ferrari after getting him at the start, and only managing to overtake Colapinto by boxing first, factors that granted him a final P10 on the 18th date of the F1 2024 calendar.
“I think we had a pretty good lap 1, but unfortunately we didn’t capitalise on it. And yeah, unfortunately Carlos did the undercut on us and looking at it, I think given how difficult it was to overtake today, we really needed to be a little bit further ahead,” Pérez explained.
The Mexican spent more than 30 laps unable to overtake Nico Hülkenberg after their only stop as dirty air was a serious factor around Marina Bay.
“It was a total disaster to be behind Nico for the entire race. And yeah, that was quite a painful afternoon.”
Pérez assured the car felt better than in qualifying where he stated facing problems with set-up changes that hampered his efforts over a single lap.
“The braking issue was only a problem when I was getting close to people. Other than that it was all good.
“I think we balanced out the car a little bit better. It’s a shame really that we just qualified so far out of position.
“I think we know what things we did wrong and we’ve got to come back and hopefully in Austin it’s where we can show our true pace because the car should be a lot better in a more standard circuit.”
In a key moment of his race, Pérez pitted on lap 28, managing an undercut on the Argentinian driving for Williams, as Colapinto stopped on lap 29 and came out on track just behind Pérez, allowing the Mexican to grab the last point of the race as the 21-year-old finished P11.
The Red Bull driver praised Colapinto during the on race on the radio, and he continued that afterwards.
“He did a fantastic race. I think he didn’t put a foot wrong. It was just very difficult to keep up with him at the time.
“It was just a difficult race. In the end we managed to do the undercut on him but that was the only one we could do.”
Pérez was questioned whether it was an option for him to pit in the last moments of the race to steal the fastest lap point from McLaren to help Max Verstappen in the Drivers’ Championship. However, that was finally taken by Daniel Ricciardo amongst rumours of him leaving RB.
“Yeah, I don’t know what happened there. I think the team was discussing it so I think in the end we decided to stay. It was one point anyway.
“The team was thinking about it but in the end it didn’t happen.”
The Mexican driver concluded by praising teammate Verstappen on his podium finish when the RB20 isn’t at its peak of performance, and he spoke about his expectations for the next F1 race in Austin, Texas, in four weeks’ time.
“Yeah, I think he had a tremendous weekend. He really got on top of it.
“I mean, thinking on Friday he was 15th, half a second away from me and he managed to pull it back, which is good. But we’ve got some work to do in places like this.
“I really hope that when we go to a more standard circuit we can show a bit more pace and hopefully we can bring some good upgrades for Austin.”
